


countdown.

by orphan_account



Category: Under the Red Hood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a feeling of wrongness that’s been following him around since their plane first landed and he can’t shake the feeling that something is about to happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	countdown.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've actually been to Bosnia (something like six or seven years) so if any of my knowledge of what things look like is off, blame time and my pictures being blurry.

**eight.**

They’re driving up twisting, winding roads in an SUV that  _screams_  American. None of the locals have cars this wide. They’re all compact, almost like Smart Cars, perfect for navigating Sarajevo’s equally small and absurdly curved streets. But they’re not in the city proper now, and the roads are just getting rougher and rougher as they drive slowly up to their destination.

When they stop, Jason all but leaps out of the car, ready to explore the surrounding forests while Bruce does his thing. A strong, familiar hand on his arm stops him from making the step into the grass, however. “What?” he asks testily.

Bruce just nods down at a street sign a little ways away. It takes him a moment to notice the thing sticking out of the ground right next to the sign.

“ _Fuck_!” he says and stumbles back a little. “Is that a  _landmine_?”

A nod is his answer. “A live one. Don’t step off the roads.”

Sufficiently rattled, Jason carefully picks his way along the edge of the white, rock-gravel street towards the massive concrete structure in front of him. Blowing up in fucking  _Bosnia_  of all places would be a terrible way to go.

Bruce stands a ways away, laughing and smiling charmingly as he talks to the woman who is supposed to be giving Bruce Wayne some information on Sarajevo’s culture and history— all of which Bruce probably already knows. With a slightly wry smile, Jason hauls himself up onto the graffiti covered cement and climbs to the very top. It’s hard to believe this rusting piece of junk was once the bobsled run. ‘84 Olympics. 

1984 wasn’t all that long ago. Funny, how things change.

Out in the city, a mosque starts up the call to prayer. Another follows, and another, and another, until the song seems to hang over the city and the mountains, covering everything like an eerie fog. Jason sits on the run, hand brushing over the dip in the concrete made by a tank’s canon and tries to ignore how that chant, combined with what he’s looking at, reminds him of death.

 **seven.**

Bruce gives him the next day to himself as he goes undercover to talk to their informant. Jason takes to the streets, heading for Stari Grad and  _Baščaršija_ , a place that’s actually not all that bad, even if the name is ridiculous. (Bash-tarsh-shee-ah is the closest pronunciation he can get to the actual thing, even with all the lessons on conversational Serbo-Croatian Bruce shoved into his head a while back.) It’s something like a giant open market, wooden stalls.

Some of the stuff he sees is boring as hell (Italian leather shoes from Italy that still somehow manage to look cheaper than his beat up sneakers) but some of it makes him think. Like how so many places sell things made out of shell-casings, some the size of his  _hand_ , as fucking tourist items. No, sir, there’s no snow-globes and cheap-ass magnets, here. But, here, have a bullet that looks like it could rip you in two covered in carvings. They're great for kids.

He buys a hand-carved wooden chess set for Bruce. It folds in half and is light. Portable, unlike the set back home at the Manor. Jason figures it was a better buy than a casing on a chain.

He sighs and sits on a large fountain in the middle of a square, ignoring how the slightly damp cement combined with the cold makes it feel like he’s sitting on ice. There’s a feeling of wrongness that’s been following him around since their plane first landed and he can’t shake the feeling that something is about to—

“Are you going to drink?”

It takes a moment for his brain to process the Bosnian, maybe a bit more than normal because there’s a girl peering at him curiously, an open smile on her face and... wow, she’s really kind of pretty.

 **six.**

Her name is Sevdije. He has no idea how to spell that and can barely pronounce it, but Sevi, as she insists on being called, sits through his terribly pronounced Serbo-Croatian with a thoroughly amused look. She’s not much older than him, seventeen, she says, and he thinks she’s gotta be barely that. Even with the tight leggings, heels, dress and poofy coat that make her look like she’s a little fashionista wannabe, she still seems like a kid.

But she’s a fashionista kid who saw him at her father’s store and thought the American tourist boy could use a tour guide. No charge, even.

She first tells him about the fountain. “It’s a special fountain. They have fountains like this all over the city, but this one is really special. They say that if you visit and drink from it, you’ll return to Sarajevo someday after you leave.”

He drinks and doesn’t think about what it may mean that he’d one day be coming back to this city that he kind of loathes.

Sevi drags him all over the city, to a little hole in the wall bakery that makes these things like donuts except they have actual strawberries and Nutela filling them. They’re one of the most delicious things Jason’s ever tasted and it’s like angels dancing on his tongue. (Sevi laughs at his pleased groan when he tastes them. He flicks a little bit of chocolate at her.)

She shows him bridge where Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, sparking World War I. She shows him the library that was burned during the war across the river, both of them almost-but-not-quite rebuilt.

They eat lunch at this place she calls something like “The Spite Café.” There’s a ridiculous story about it, where during the war someone told the owner he needed to move his restaurant or he’d get killed or something, so he just demolished the place and rebuilt it brick for brick on the other side of the river.

Sevi tells it better than he ever could and he laughs so hard at it he inhales the meat and cheese burek he’s eating.

 **five.**

“Why are there so many cemeteries?” he asks her haltingly as they pass yet  _another_  hill covered in white stones.

Sevi looks a little sad for a moment and shrugs. “The war,” is how she answers and that feeling of foreboding hits Jason again like a punch to the gut.

She changes course abruptly, then and shows him the soccer stadium that’s in the city. She tells him of how, during the war, people buried their dead there because the snipers couldn’t get to them because of the way the stadium was built.

He almost doesn’t ask her about the red and pink resin he’s been seeing in the streets. “Sarajevo roses,” she calls them. They’re places where the bombs hit and destroyed the pavement and cobblestone, forever memorialized to remember the blood that painted the country.

Jason’s breath quickens when he stares at them and swallows hard against the knot in his throat.

 **four.**

He goes out on patrol that night, even though Bruce asks him not to. He’s restless, and his entire body seems to thrum with the need to get out there and  _move_. Bruce, reluctantly, lets him go, saying that he’ll be out shortly and telling Jason to be careful on the rooftops. Most of them are old and rickety.

There’s a few minutes when he pauses, sitting in shadow and watching the people in the bazaar laughing and smiling brightly. Even with the snow and cold, the weekend sees the streets full of young people dancing and enjoying themselves. It makes him smile a little. Even the Roma girl he saw singing for coins earlier that day is allowed to dance in the streets and be happy.

Not everything is shiny and dandy, though. There’s a muffled scream and Jason moves across rooftops and into back alleys to take care of the four punks that decided Saturday was a good a night as any to try and molest a girl.

Sucks to be them.

He breaks one guy’s nose as he comes own them, elbow out and cape flaring behind him. The small smile on Jason’s face turns into a shit-eating grin as his fists and feet move in familiar motions, beating the dipshits bad enough that they’d think twice next time they wanted to touch a lady.

Speaking of... he turns to look at the girl and is a little started to find out it’s Sevi he’s just saved. Her brown eyes are wide and wet as she looks between the men running away and Jason. “ _Hvala_ ,” she says shakily. Thank you.

A tremulous smile is directed his way and before Jason can melt back into the shadows, she reaches out a hand to grab the back of his neck and plants a kiss right on his lips. Sevi doesn’t give him a chance to respond. “Thank you, tourist boy,” she says before running off, back to join the crowd.

Figures it’d be a lot harder to keep a secret identity when you’re paler than most people here. No wonder Bruce didn’t want him going out.

He licks his lips and tastes chocolate and Fanta.

 **three.**

Just after midnight is when things go wrong.

Jason knows— he  _knows_ — he should wait for Bruce to show up before he takes on these idiots. But, dammit, they’ve been following this trail around the world and right now, Jason’s so close to the end of this case he can fucking  _taste_  it. So he goes in fists first, a sarcastic and witty quip on his lips.

It’s not easy, but it’s not overly hard either, to give these guys the beat down. Their numbers mean he takes a few hits, but. Well. That’s to be expected. He’s not Batman, after all.

But he’s Robin and that means he still should have seen that one hit coming.

At least, that’s what he thinks after the tire-iron hits his head and everything goes black.

 **two.**

The laugh is what wakes him up with a start. It makes almost every muscle in his body tense, even as his head whips to the side with the force of the slap.

“Wakey wakey! Up and at ‘em, Champ!” the Joker rasps before he laughs again.

The first time Jason kisses concrete and tastes blood, he thinks that he liked Sevi’s chocolate kiss better. The second time, he’s cursing out whatever fucking genius and/or retard it was that invented handcuffs that were small enough that he couldn’t slip, even if he crushed the bones in his hand and got it wet with his blood.

When the crowbar hits his ribs, Jason thinks that Batman is going to rain fire and brimstone down on this jack-ass for beating the shit out of his Robin. The strikes continue and his mind wanders, probably to protect him from the pain. He thinks of Dick and what he would’ve done in this situation. Perfect Grayson and his stupid perfect first son, first Robin-ness. Was it really only two days ago they’d had that barest piece of a phone conversation? ( _“I’m not putting on the short pants again.”_

 _“What, I don’t even get a hello, this is Bruce’s phone, Jason speaking? I’m hurt.”_

 _“You’ll get the pleasantries when B gets a phone that doesn’t have caller ID.”_

 _“Heh. Alright, Little Wing. Put Bruce on the line, will you?”_

 _“What am I, chopped liver? Don’t answer that. Here’s Bruce.”_ ) It feels like lifetimes ago.

Eventually his thoughts just turn into him silently screaming everything he doesn’t dare show the Joker, in words or expression.  _Bruce, where the fuck are you?!_

 **one.**

It hurts when he gets his hands from behind his back to in front of him. It hurts even more to stand. It’s a numb kind of hurt, though. Like slicing a finger and going “Ow,” because those nerves are reacting, but it’s a detached sort of pain.

Hitting the ground again sends a lance of real pain through him and wakes Jason up, bringing him fully back to the present. Part of him wishes he’d stayed detached and dreaming. The other part of him thinks Batman would never had let himself get to that point and keeps crawling.

The locked door is an obstacle, sure. But Bruce is on his way, and any second now there’s going to be a—  _beep_ — No, not a beep. A click. 

… A beep?

Jason opens his eyes and stares in horror at the bomb in the corner. Well, he thinks, that explains the foreboding feeling. There’s only a few second before it goes off, but those few seconds are enough to let panic seize him as everything he didn’t do floats through his head. He never got a chance to really prove himself. Maybe if he’d lived longer, he could’ve actually been brothers with Dick, once he showed that really, anything he could do, Jason could do better. He’s never going to see Bruce again.

Bruce isn’t going to make it in time.

 _Fuck._

Jason relaxes, resigns himself to his fate and leans his head against the cool metal door. His eyes fall shut as he listens to the last beep before heat and noise envelope him.

And he thinks, isn’t it funny-notfunny-funny that he’s dying during what’s probably the last snowfall for the region exactly a week and a half before the first day of spring?

Some Robin he is.

 **zero.**

He doesn't think about what it means, months later when he stands in the ruins of the warehouse, that the fountain was right.

He just rages at the heavens and screams until he's hoarse.


End file.
